The portrait depicts the writer Ivan Turgenev, who was a close friend of Fyodor Tyutchev and highly appreciated his poems. There always was a warm, friendly relationship between the two authors. Tyutchev also valued Turgenev’s talent. He and all the members of the poet’s family especially admired ‘A Sportsman’s Sketches’ — this collection of short stories demonstrated the writer’s ‘fullness of life’ and the ‘power of his talent’. The poet wrote that they are truly ‘amazing’. In a letter to his second wife Ernestina Fyodorovna Tyutchev remarked,

In 1852, Turgenev was arrested and exiled from the capital to his estate Spasskoe-Lutovinovo in the Oryol governorate, which was in the vicinity of the Tyutchev family estate. The reason for the arrest was an obituary article in memory of Nikolai Gogol, published in the journal ‘Moskovskie Vedomosti’. Tyutchev sympathized with the exiled writer, ‘We must wish him, an artist, to find enough air and strength in his talent to prevent a man from suffocating…’ The poet also expressed the hope that Turgenev would come to visit Ovstug as a neighbor, ‘If he comes to visit you, which I wish you with all my heart, give him my sincere greetings.’

Turgenev also cherished his friendship with Tyutchev. ‘He and Dad are best friends, — Anna Tyutcheva, the poet’s daughter wrote. — When they meet, they spend whole evenings together. They match each other so well — both are witty, good-natured and messy…’ Turgenev also wrote about Tyutchev’s poetry, ‘They should not argue about Tyutchev — he, who does not feel him, thereby proves that he does not feel poetry.’

Without Turgenev’s direct participation, many of Tyutchev’s poems would never have reached the reader. The writer edited the first lifetime collection of Tyutchev’s poems, which were published in 1854. “Tyutchev created verses that are not destined to die, ” Turgenev claimed. The poet’s illness and death made him deeply sorry, ‘One bright and sensitive mind, one good person less,  Turgenev wrote.